


Flight School

by chilerelleno



Category: Maximum Ride - James Patterson, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bilingual Character(s), Bird/Human Hybrids, Brotherhood, Gen, Literature Student Kim Namjoon | RM, On the Run, Underground Rapper Min Yoongi | Suga
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27089485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chilerelleno/pseuds/chilerelleno
Summary: Twenty seven year-old Min Yoongi has a lot going on in his life. He's constantly traveling and runs a successful blog where he uploads his tracks. He's been doing this for many a year, and he doesn't know much else. He doesn't want to live any differently. But he really can't; he's a mutant with wings and other enhancements. He's never been able to escape the lab that created him... until he meets Kim Namjoon, who's just gullible enough to believe in hope.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	1. Carpe Diem

Yoongi doesn’t have a phone or a laptop. It causes too much trouble.  
He doesn’t like them much, first. When he was younger, he had to figure out how to operate one fast. His caregivers tested him.  
They gave him a Samsung and told him to use it. They didn’t tell him what it was for, why he needed it, or that they were surveilling him.  
It took him about ten minutes to figure out how to write contacts’ names in the text fields. This was back in the early 2000s, where phones appeared in more economical forms than they do now. He guessed--correctly--that the device could be used for communication, but he was more interested in trying to hotwire the thing. Sneakily.  
As he passes over the gloomy and dank Colorado landscape, these thoughts come to mind, but he tries to shove them out, because the past is the past.  
And good thing too, for a drone slips into his space and begins fire.  
Yoongi dives downwards, flustered.  
Damn, he isn’t usually like this.  
He adjusts himself and pounds around his little chunk of airspace, trying to avoid the deadly, lean steel arrows flying at him from behind.  
The drone is a sweet piece of work, or would be if it weren’t trying to kill him. It’s really more of a flying-saucer-in-an-elementary-school-art-contest-sized type, but it’s built like a truck.  
And there’s really no time to admire the innerworkings of his enemy’s craftsmanship, for more killing machines appear from undisclosed locations all around the man rapidly trying to make a run for it.  
One even has the ability to talk.  
“Stop! This is Alexis Labs! Stop and we will cease fire!”  
Like hell I will, Yoongi thinks, breathing hard. He can barely think at all, but if training has taught him anything, the minute you stop thinking is the minute you let go.  
He’s spent years running from the Labs, ever since he was eleven. He is now twenty-seven. He can’t let this be the moment they finally catch him.  
Except when he goes down.  
He does a fancy move to evade one dangerous spiny air-fighter, a bit of a spiral, and another from below shoots directly into his right wing. Feathers explode from where it hits, a black ink splash in the middle of the September sky.  
Almost faster than he can process his injury, he’s headed down, down, down.  
But he’s been at this for sixteen years. He knows how to handle a crisis or two.  
In a moment of bravery and daring-do, he pulls his addled brain together and forces out his weak telekinesis skills on the drones. He might’ve used this before, when they first attacked, but the thought did occur to him that it would have been of little use.  
His abilities come in spurts, and he has to measure them very carefully. Use them wantonly, and more trouble comes along than one would want.  
His mind grasps two drones as he falls, trying to catch the 130-pound body that houses a mutant from a real government-affiliated lab. How much slower he starts to fall is almost negligible, but he forces himself downward with one wing toward the pine below him. He knows when he lets go of the machines they will implode from the energy of the telekinesis, and this is his attempt to escape their last cry.  
Yoongi is about fifteen feet above needle-covered ground when he lets his mind rest. This is also the moment Yoongi grabs onto pine branches and pulls himself in for a tree hug. His hands bristle with pain as the needles poke into his skin, but it’s the explosion of the drones above him he needs to escape from, so he reminds himself that “pain is only temporary when you want to live.”  
He uses the branches to wrangle himself in toward the trunk, and grips it tightly.  
Everything else seems to happen in slow motion, then.  
The drones stop their rapid cycling of weaponry… they freeze… and just as Yoongi is thrusting himself at the tree to take cover, both explode on each other. The heat should be enough to divert the others--  
Oh, shit.  
The branches are alight.  
Yoongi unhitches himself from the tree and slides away while the tree sets on fire. His wing stabs him with pain, so he runs from tree to tree in the forest in an aggravated lurch, trying to duck for cover.  
His pitch-black everything--clothes, wings, hair--might distract the remaining fringe machines because of the cool tone. But he can’t stay hidden forever.  
They’re relentless.  
He imagines that they’re reporting his death to AL Labs right now, silently uploading pictures of the scene and location data to scientists who will read and interpret the information and try to see if they had annihilated the person they had a hand in creating.  
Yoongi is entertaining this thought when he watches another tree go up in flames, and then he starts to allow worry to creep into his brain.  
What if he started a forest fire?  
What if he can’t escape it?  
Keep moving to survive, keep moving to survive.  
The arrow is stuck in his wing, and it’s killing him.  
He stops to lean against a tree that hasn’t succumbed to the heat, and collapses.  
\--  
“Are you okay? What are you doing here? The place is lit!” a voice yells at him in a haze tinted by the iron smell of blood and ash.  
He can’t come up with a response that makes sense in English, for that’s what the man is speaking. Yoongi learned some English back at the lab, but he was starved of a worldly education growing up, so he could barely speak any out loud.  
The young man who is now kneeling at his side appears extremely concerned and with all the hunting gear he’s sporting, Yoongi doesn't know how the person keeps from fainting. It is hot out.  
So, so hot.  
“I’m not feeling the greatest,” Yoongi mumbles in Korean, his native language.  
To his surprise, the man responds back. “I can see that. What were you doing out here?”  
“I didn’t set the fire, if that’s what you think. I just… Ack,” Yoongi hisses. He tries not to draw attention to his injured extra body part, but something told him that the other man has already seen everything and figured out all that could be known.  
“Are you an angel?”  
Wait…  
Yoongi’s first response is to laugh, and lets a chuckle slip by accident.  
But this can work.  
He stares at the cross on the man’s chest and builds up courage to speak after forcing himself to be strong for so long. Now he can have a little fun.  
“Yes, I am,” he replies. His voice drifts above the smoke, almost as if it’s willing it away.  
“Do all angels have black wings?”  
Yoongi smiles, though he tries to do it with a pinch of sugar instead of salt, as he usually does. “Good question. My wings are black because I’m a fallen angel.”  
The man recoils instantly, grabbing for his cross. Yoongi feebly reaches out toward him, and drops his hand when he sees the man retreat a bit farther.  
Gotta make it good, ya know. Or he’ll never live to see another blog post.  
“The Heavens are at war right now. God doesn’t know who to trust. Not even his archangel Michael.”  
The man has a look of disgust on his face that turns to surprise, then to awe. He draws nearer. “You can’t be…”  
“I am. Angels appear to the ones who pray for them as the type of people they can most relate to. We’re similar to demons in that way, but I assure you, I am no demon.”  
“But I didn’t--”  
“You didn’t wish for an angel to come to your side and assist you?” Yoongi coughs.  
He has to speak slower.  
“Fine, I did. But to be honest, my faith in Christianity was waning.”  
“Then you cried at just the right time.”  
“You heard me?”  
No shit, Sherlock.  
“Yes, I did,” Yoongi admits.  
“Are you--what do I do to help you?”  
“If you don’t hurry, I will die since I’ve been cast out of Heaven.”  
“But how can I…?”  
“Do you have a car?”  
“Uh--”  
“Steal it.”  
“That’s not right! That’s--”  
“Do you want to be the savior of Heaven or not? You’ve been chosen, boy!”  
“Yeah? I mean--Oh my God! More fire, ah!”  
“I can’t believe we put our trust in this boy…” Yoongi says, shaking his head weakly. The pain has him nearly unconscious again.  
“Fine, fine! I’ll carry you! It’s God’s duty! It’s someone’s! I don’t know!”  
“Not wanting to get charged with murder is strong motivation.”  
“How would that ever occur?”  
“You’re a bowhunter.” The birdman points at his wound. His new companion gulps.  
And with that, he picks Yoongi up and begins running the opposite direction of the burning trees.  
“My name’s Namjoon,” he says.  
But Yoongi has already passed out.


	2. To Be Awake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yoongi wakes up in a strange place and has to figure out what's going on.

When Yoongi wakes up, he can’t see anything. His eyes are dewy from claustrophobia. But he’s completely blind to whatever is around him.  
He moves in one direction, and gets caught. He moves in another--can’t move... again. In a final attempt to free himself, he kicks at anything, everything, but not even his legs will move.  
This must be the end. The Korean-American man was a spy for ALX Labs. Now they’re going to experiment on him. They’re going to test him. They’re going to--  
A light flicks on, and Yoongi can see that someone has wrapped cloth around his eyes, but they screech in pain when he tries to blink. He shuts them, and braces for impact.  
“I may be incapacitated, but I’m a force unto myself,” Yoongi says in Korean--the language of ALX Labs--though the normally smooth way it would come out ends strangled and foreign on his tongue.  
“I don’t know what you’re saying there, partner, but you’re in no shape to be fightin’,” a voice comes to Yoongi’s ears, speaking English. Yoongi starts moving again, and this time he takes note of a sound that reminds him of a screen door shutting repeatedly. The doctor--presumably--tells him to stop, but the idea that the 20-something can’t figure out what the sound is drives him crazy, so he keeps bouncing.  
“I’ll have to restrain you further if you don’t--”  
A cot.  
“--cooperate.”  
Strange. Back home they would have put him in a cage and said it was the Ritz.  
“Calm down, dude,” the voice continues. Yoongi feels hands on his shoulders, and he jumps and struggles against his bonds. He’s in a straight jacket. “Nams said you could understand me, so I’ll go with it.”  
“You think I enjoy this? I’ve been betrayed. You’re all gross, despicable humans--” Yoongi begins, waiting for the usual tongue-lashing doctors at the Labs usually give him when he talks smack after he himself messes up.  
“I really can’t understand you, Michael. I really hope Nams gets here soon, because Korean is a real tongue twister. How did you end up speaking Korean anyway? Don’t angels speak all languages?”  
The birdman lets out a hoarse laugh, and is immediately chided by the young man who is serving as his companion.  
“You were severely injured yesterday, keep your mouth shut,” he says, steaming.  
“Your… name?” Yoongi starts.  
“My name is Maddox. Michael and Maddox, two Ms! We’re twins.”  
Ugh.  
“You doctor?”  
“No. I’m a doctor-in-training, though.”  
We got a Pinky over here. It’s better than being tested on by a mad scientist. And if Yoongi’s existence is anything to go by, he knows what being under the jurisdiction of a Brain is like.  
“Where this place is?”  
“You’re in my residency’s clinic.”  
“Clinic?”  
“Yeah, I’m a vet. Nams didn’t know where to take you--to a human doctor or animal, since you’re a mix of both, right? Plus he doesn’t trust anyone else.”  
“You two are friends?”  
“You say that like you’re surprised! Of course we are. I’m in veterinary medicine and he’s getting his Master’s in Lit. You wouldn’t think we get along but we do splendidly!”  
It’s a question because… well, who needs to explain rising intonation to a regular anglosphere inhabitant? He don’t care none.  
Never mind.  
“And I’mma ask… who the fuck is ‘Nams’? I don’t know him.”  
There’s silence as Maddox comtemplates this outburst. “My, what colorful vocabulary. That’s my nickname for ‘Namjoon’, the man that brought you here. He’s also the one that discovered you in the forest. But don’t shoot the messenger! I--”  
“Thanks for explain,” Yoongi says quickly, hushing the all-too-eager student.  
He’s picturing Maddox as a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed rich kid. He doesn’t seem terrible, but he sure grates on Yoongi’s nerves. Still, the injured man still has no proof that the two men entrusted with his secret are not villains.  
There’s not much he can do that won’t reveal him as a creation from AL Labs, so he remains quiet while he thinks of a solution. Maddox talks to basically himself during this time.  
“What are my bones?” he finally asks, interrupting the young doctor’s stream of thought.  
“Your bones?” Yoongi’s poor English appears to stump him for a second. Then when he thinks he understands, he nods and continues. “Um, they appear to be bird bones. But it looks like you’ve had some injuries to your arms where titanium was put in as some sort of replacement. It’s really odd.”  
“Thank you,” the birdman says, smirking.  
“You’re a weird one. You know, I don’t believe you’re an archangel at all, and if it weren’t for Nams and I’s strong bond, I’d definitely be investigating more into this. I do know I believe you’re one of those kids from urban legend, all grown-up.”  
Yoongi keeps a chuckle to himself. He must know about the time he and his flock visited Colorado as younger people. Younger than now, that is.  
“What about God?” he asks, a bit mischievously, but does his best to hide it all.  
“I believe there is a God, but there’s nothing godly about your injuries or the fact that you exist. I respect all God’s creatures, especially those that can’t speak to defend themselves, so please don’t take that as an insult. You exist for a reason, and it’s probably not a good one.” There’s fear in his voice. It’s trembling. “Though I’m sure you’re nice.”  
“I’m good,” Yoongi says. “I’m angel.”  
He’s about to shake Maddox’s hand when he realizes--again--that his arms are bound in casts, or something of the sort.  
There’s a pregnant silence for about five seconds and then the door to wherever they’re currently in slams open, startling Yoongi.  
“Holy shit!” he yelps in Korean.  
“Maddox, when did he wake up?”  
Namjoon.  
“About twenty minutes ago,” Maddox responds, a bit less perky than before. “He’s a tough one to deal with.”  
“If he could take even your jazz out of you, I imagine,” Namjoon says. “But it’s all for self-growth!”  
Yoongi cringes.  
Maddox breathes in.  
“What? Did I say something?” says Namjoon.  
“Nothing at all,” replies Maddox, quickly, almost as if he’s trying to beat Yoongi to the answer.  
“Don’t worry about it,” Yoongi says in Korean.  
Namjoon sighs and asks Maddox, “Can I take him home now?”  
Maddox chuckles. “If you’d like. He’s all bandaged up. I wouldn’t recommend taking off the eyewear for at least a couple days.”  
“It wasn’t my idea, Michael,” Namjoon says to Yoongi in Korean, voice apologetic. “He recommended it and I don’t know anything about vet stuff, so… It’s no excuse, but…”  
“Then make up for it. Take this stuff off me. I’m not an animal that a human would treat in contempt. Why is this guy even a doctor?”  
“Hey, I understand you’re upset, but like, don’t evoke the power of God or anything. He’s a good lad.”  
“Just take off the bandages.”  
“Maddox, we’re taking off--”  
“You can’t be serious.”  
“We are. Let’s not be inhumane.”  
Yoongi pictures Maddox smiling through it, but both of them know that the other isn’t exactly who they say they are.  
“Fine. Let’s get these off you, Michael,” Maddox says, as he unravels the gauze around the “angel’s” eyes.  
When Yoongi tries to open them wide, he’s met with a blurry picture. He’s tempted to bite Maddox, but he knows that beyond personal entertainment, that won’t get him anywhere. “Why is my vision like this?”  
“It’s probably from the smoke,” Namjoon says, and Yoongi can see him gesturing to Maddox for confirmation. Maddox nods.  
“You barely got out of there alive, man,” says the doctor.  
“Thank you for helping me,” says Yoongi in English, shocking his two new acquaintances.  
“Well, you’re welcome,” says Maddox.  
“See, he’s not all that bad,” Namjoon says, jabbing his friend in the ribs. The doctor recoils.  
“Don’t break them,” he breathes quietly. “And he’s okay. He’s just grumpy.”  
“Exactly! I would be too if I fell from Heaven. Ah, I bet it’s nice up there,” Namjoon says dreamily.  
Yoongi wants to vomit.  
Then he notices how they’ve controlled him, and he starts cussing up a storm in Korean.  
“I knew he’d get pissed,” says Maddox, the birdman’s bad mood hopping from person to person.  
“It’s for your own safety, Michael. We couldn’t have you running nor picking at your wing, so we had to tie you up like this. Trust me, I know it’s not ideal, but… ah, please don’t hurt me. I didn’t mean to disgrace you.”  
Yoongi considers this a moment, and smiles. “You know, you’re not half bad either, Namjoon. But if you don’t at least give me my legs, I’ll find a special place in Hell for you.”  
The air in the room shifts.  
“Maddox--”  
“Already on it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if it wasn't clear when Yoongi and Namjoon were speaking Korean or English. I tried my best to convey that. The general rule of thumb in this story is that if Yoongi is interacting with Namjoon, he's speaking Korean... because it's more comfortable.


	3. Dream a Better Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yoongi rides home in style... but where to?

Yoongi drifts in and out of consciousness on the way home. They’re driving slowly, and there’s the hum of English chatter and a seemingly endlessly looping American classic rock song coming from the radio. The hybrid wants to tense, because there has to be another person in the car with them if there’s English being spoken--but his body is already stiffer than a board, so there’s nothing left to gather up and squish like a stress ball.  
He dreams about his flock. Taehyung’s wild telekinetic escapades. Seokjin’s brown wings losing their feathers when he spotted an animal of prey. Jimin eating a meal fit for four after escaping a satellite facility where he’d been forced to fast.  
The most experienced, Yoongi had a responsibility to watch over them. But now he was playing a game with lowly humans to win his freedom--his brothers--back. He worried for Seokjin, who while the eldest, wasn’t as good in all the necessary types of combat.  
Seokjin was one of the lab’s most beautiful creations, and they had misogynistically deemed his beauty to be a sign of fairness, weakness, womanhood. So he had grown up in a purer captivity than the rest of Yoongi’s brothers, cooking and not allowed to strain a hair on his head.  
Of course, it wasn’t until the Big One that the lab had begun hunting down Jungkook, for not wanting to be treated the same.  
It was a despicable organization.  
Hypocrisy all over.  
Seokjin made a damn good cook, though. And he was the best older brother figure a man could ask for.  
So suck it, ALX Labs.  
“Michael!”  
_Ah, fuck the religious shit._ Oh, man. Did he say that out loud?  
“Michael, we’re at my house!”  
_No, I want to go back to sleep._  
“Maybe we should just leave him in the car,” said another, unfamiliar yet ever-so-slightly recognizable voice.  
“No, Ricky. He’ll get hurt that way. Maddox specifically said he has to go easy.”  
“Fine, man, fine. I was just offerin’ a suggestion. Don’t have to take it.”  
“It’s alright. This situation’s just a real puzzler,” Namjoon says, continuing on his train of thought. “Let me--”  
“Don’t even think about it,” Yoongi snaps, trying to wrastle himself up into a sitting position.  
“I didn’t say anything to you!” Namjoon huffs, a bit of a tear coming to his voice.  
“Ick, don’t get all emotional on me. You’re stronger than an injured angel, trust me. It’s proven religious fact,” Yoongi says quickly. “Where are we?”  
“We’re at Joshua’s cabin!” Namjoon raises his hands excitedly and walks a few paces around in the moonlit dirt. From inside the car, Yoongi can see pine trees surrounding a modern-looking wooden abode, something much different than anything he’s used to.  
The open back door to the Asian-made car, which must’ve been flung open by Namjoon or one of his friends, invites him to go outside. He wants to run, but knows he won’t get anywhere. Still, the feeling is nice.  
The winged man steps unevenly out of the vehicle after a minute of intense struggle and nay-saying to help from Namjoon. “Joshua? Who’s he? Friend from college?” Yoongi raises an eyebrow.  
Namjoon looks at his shoes. “Yeah.”  
“Where are you studying?”  
“UC Boulder.”  
“Lit major, I heard. You like to read?”  
“Excuse my English, but is this bastard Michael picking on ya?” says a kid with sandy-colored hair and an orange beanie. Joshua.  
_Namjoon needs better friends.  
Ack. I’m glad I didn’t say that aloud._  
“No,” Yoongi and Namjoon say at the same time.  
“We were just talking about my studies,” Namjoon jumps in. “He was asking me if I like to read. Can you believe it?”  
Joshua opens his mouth, and what comes out should probably earn him a good soap-washing. “Listen to you, ‘studies’. And asking me if I can believe it? I believe wholeheartedly in God but this… thing… is different. He’s a mutant. A Devil’s seed.”  
Namjoon looks away from his friend, and grabs Yoongi’s good arm with a gentle tug as he proceeds toward the front door of said friend’s cabin.  
“I don’t know about you, boy, but this seems awful suspicious,” Yoongi says, not looking back at Joshua nor the other man that was in the car with them, and changing his tone so they can’t guess at the Korean.  
“Why?” Namjoon stops what he’s doing--fiddling with the lock and key--and looks at Yoongi with big eyes.  
“Your friends seem bad news, if you catch my drift,” Yoongi finishes real quiet as Namjoon pops the steel door open.  
“I want to trust you Michael, but I think you’re wrong here.”  
“We’ll see.”  
“I’ve always been told I have a good intuition for people,” Namjoon whispers.  
Yoongi hushes him. “I meant, ‘we’ll see each other in hell.’ Especially if your friends end up being serial killers.”  
Namjoon lets himself in the cabin, and as soon as Yoongi catches sight of all the amenities, he lets all talk of murder drop… ‘cause man does he want to sit in the indoor jacuzzi.


End file.
